Therapeutic Interventions for Spinal Cord Injury

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Mobility

Gait Training

The ability to walk independently is a prerequisite for most daily activities. The capacity to walk in a community setting requires the ability to walk at speeds that enable an individual to cross the street in the time allotted by pedestrian lights, to step on and off a moving walkway, in and out of automatic doors, walk around furniture, under and over objects and negotiate kerbs. A walking velocity of 1.1 - 1.5 m/s is considered to be fast enough to function as a pedestrian in different environmental and social contexts.

The major requirements for successful walking include; 

• Support of body mass by lower limbs
• Propulsion of the body in the intended direction
• The production of a basic locomotor rhythm
• Dynamic balance control of the moving body
• Flexibility, i.e. the ability to adapt the movement to changing environmental demands and goals.

Walking dysfunction is common in individuals with an incomplete spinal cord injury, arising not only from the impairments associated with the spinal cord lesion but also from secondary cardiovascular and musculoskeletal consequences of disuse and physical inactivity. Muscle weakness and paralysis, poor motor control and soft tissue contracture are major contributors to walking dysfunction post spinal cord injury.

Treadmill

The incentive to provide a challenging environment, in which there is an opportunity to practise repetitively the missing components of gait, has underpinned another task-specific activity. This involves using a treadmill for gait re-training and also for improvements in cardiovascular function. A harness can be used for individuals with significant functional limitations, and this also offers the opportunity to grade the amount of body weight support provided. Therapists help to facilitate alternating stepping and weight-bearing, and as many as three therapists may be required to assist with the complete gait cycle. It has been suggested that treadmill training can support Gait Re-education as;

1. It allows a complete practice of the full gait cycle
2. It provides opportunity  for gaining improvements in speed and endurance
3. It optimises cardiovascular fitness

Task -specific training on a treadmill has also been shown to induce expansion of subcortical and cortical locomotion areas in individuals following stroke and spinal cord injury. It can result in an increase in cadence and a shortening of step length as compared to overground walking.

Robotics

Over the past decade robotics technologies are more commonly incorporated into the daily treatment schedule of many individuals post spinal cord injury. These interventions hold greater promise than simply replicating traditional therapy, because they allow therapists an unprecedented ability to specify and monitor movement features such as speed, direction, amplitude, and joint coordination patterns and to introduce controlled perturbations into therapy.

Rehabilitation robotics is a field of research dedicated to understanding and augmenting rehabilitation through the application of robotic devices. Rehabilitation robotics includes development of robotic devices tailored for assisting different sensorimotor functions (e.g. arm, hand, leg, ankle, development of different schemes of assisting therapeutic training, and assessment of sensorimotor performance). Rehabilitation using robotics is generally well tolerated, and has been found to be an effective adjunct to therapy in individuals with motor impairments as a result of a spinal cord injury.

Robotic devices provide safe, intensive and task oriented rehabilitation allowing;

1. precisely controllable assistance or resistance during movements
2. objective and quantifiable measures of subject performance
3. good repeatability
4. increased training motivation through the use of interactive biofeedback

You can read more about Robotic Rehabilitation for the Lower Extremity and Upper Extremity Rehabilitation using Robotics on Physiopedia.

Exercise

Strength Training

Progressive resistance training is the most common form of strength training.

It is thought to be most effective when:

• it incorporates resistance
• it is appropriately progressed
• the mode of training is similar to the task in which strength gains are required

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